Increasingly documents and other digital content are being shared over the Internet or other similar private networks. Typically, a presenter initiates an online meeting with one or more other users, and generates content, which the presenter may desire to share with one or more attendees of an online meeting. In a typical online meeting, shared content is transmitted from the presenter (usually through a server) to the attendees similar to a video stream, where the flow of presentation is controlled by the presenter. Thus, attendees have a passive role of viewing the presented material at the presenter's pace and direction.
Conventional presentations typically include slide shows, audio media, or video media. Screen sharing is another common technique. In screen sharing, the entire contents of the presenters screen or application is graphically transmitted to the attendees. Attendees cannot interact with the screen. Some applications allow an attendee to take control, but this is only one-at-a-time and it affects the experience of all attendees. While different content types may be used in an intermixed fashion, the overall presentation is usually subject to a single direction flow controlled by the presenter. Furthermore, online presentations are typically initiated through an online meeting application and presented content is embedded into a presentation user interface through various ways. For example, if a word processing document or a spreadsheet document is used as part of the content, their respective contents are imported into the presentation leaving only the look of the document from its native application. None of the capabilities of the native application are inherited in the presentation.